Fruit of the Spirit – Patience

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Just about everyone would confess to needing a bit more patience at times when we are in line at the grocery store or stuck in traffic. Unfortunately patience is a hard thing to learn.

The only way that we learn patience is by being in situations that require patience. A youth pastor once prayed for patience. What he got was Travis, a teenager with ADD whose mother and father were on their third and fourth marriages. He had to learn patience in order to deal with the teenager and the problems that he brought.

Patience isn’t just about hardships and learning to endure them however. Patience is about accepting the fact that not only is God in control, everything is done according to His timing.

When we become impatient, we are really telling God that His timing isn’t good enough for us and instead He needs to act right away. Obviously God can’t be bullied into doing things according to our timetable.

We need to relax and accept the bumps in the road that slow us down from time to time. God can use for His glory things that appear as obstacles to us. The apostle Paul spent several years in jail instead of evangelizing like he would have wanted to. But it is from that time that we gained several books of the New Testament.

The next time patience is required, ask yourself, “What is God trying to teach me from this situation?”

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